The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico1821 - 1876

About the project

PROJECT AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND HISTORY

The three-year project on “The Pronunciamiento in
Independent Mexico 1821-1876” was funded by the
AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) (2007-2010).
It was led by Professor Will Fowler and comprised a team
made up of two research fellows (Dr Natasha Picột [Nottingham] and Dr Germán Martínez Martínez [Essex]), two PhD students (Rosie Doyle and Kerry McDonald), and a designer / database developer (Sean Dooley). A further three PhD students worked on related topics under Professor Fowler’s supervision (Shara Ali, Melissa Boyd and Ana Romero Valderrama). The ultimate goals of the project were:

To produce a major on-line relational database that includes transcriptions of over 1,500 pronunciamientos

To publish three edited volumes on the origins, experience and memory of these forceful petitions

To enable the PhD students to complete their dissertations successfully

To assist Professor Fowler in collating the data that was to then be analysed in his monograph on the subject.

The Building of the Database
During the first year of the project, Sean Dooley (Database Designer
and Developer) set up the Pronunciamientos website, creating the means
whereby the research team was able to insert all the relevant
information and transcriptions that can now be accessed here. At
the same time, the research team tracked down pronunciamiento texts
published in edited volumes, secondary sources, and facsimilar
editions of primary sources. They drew up a list of located
pronunciamiento texts, created entries for these on the database,
and transcribed and digitised the target texts, noting in which
archives the original documents were kept in Mexico. Some time
was also spent carrying out archival research in the British
Library. They spent the second year in Mexico and the United
States, tracking down, transcribing, or copying pronunciamiento
texts (pronunciamientos, actas, etc.) that had not been
re-produced in their entirety in the secondary sources used in
Year 1 of the Project (e.g., Planes en la Nación Mexicana, 5 vols.
[1821-56] [Mexico City: Senado de la República/El Colegio de
México, 1987], or inserted in the Pronunciamientos
Database prior to their departure to Mexico. They also used
this year to check the originals of pronunciamientos inserted
in Year 1, i.e.: confirming their existence and location;
and ensuring the secondary sources in which they appeared
transcribed them correctly and in full. The Database Designer
perfected the website and undertook regular troubleshooting
tasks. In the final year of the project Dr Natasha Picột
(NP) was given the responsibility of completing the Participants
and the Glossary sections of the website, researching the
better-known pronunciados and writing up their biographical
entries with the assistance of the Diccionario Porrúa
de Historia, Biografía y Geografía de México
(Mexico City: Porrúa, 1970), as well as other sources.
Dr Germán Martínez Martínez (GMM)
revised all the pronunciamiento texts and analysed and specified
their stated grievances. SRD finished developing the website you
have before you. Throughout the project, our PhD students provided
the team with transcriptions and references of pronunciamiento
texts they located during the archival research in Mexico City,
Jalisco, San Luis Potosí and Yucatán.

The database remains a dynamic resource, which Principal
Investigator, Professor Will Fowler, is committed to updating,
improving, and expanding. As noted on the website HOME PAGE
should you know of a pronunciamiento that has not been included
in the website please contact Principal Investigator Professor
Will Fowler at: wmf1@st-andrews.ac.uk.
All additional information
will be duly acknowledged and credited.

The Project Conferences
Three conferences were held in St Andrews, based around three
different yet interrelated cycles, namely:

A selection of the papers presented at these events were included in three edited volumes, published and/or to be published by the University of Nebraska Press (for further details see Project Publications).

PROJECT PUBLICATIONS

The following publications, whether in print, in press, or in preparation, have all been written or are being completed as a result of the research undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded Pronunciamientos project.

Its contents include: Preface; Acknowledgments; Contributors;
Chronology of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 1821-1853;
“Introduction: The Nineteenth-Century Practice of the
Pronunciamiento and Its Origins,” Will Fowler; 1.
“Iguala: The Prototype,”
Timothy E. Anna; 2. “Agustín de Iturbide: From the Pronunciamiento of Iguala to the Coup of 1822”,
Ivana Frasquet and Manuel Chust; 3.
“Two Reactions to the Illegitimate Succession of 1828: Campeche and Jalapa,”
Josefina Zoraida Vázquez; 4. “Municipalities, Prefects and Pronunciamientos: Power and Political Mobilizations in the Huasteca During the First Federal Republic,”
Michael T. Ducey; 5. “The Origins of the Pronunciamientos of San Luis Potosí: An Overview,”
Kerry McDonald; 6. “The British and an Early Pronunciamiento, 1833-1834,”
Michael P. Costeloe; 7. “The Origins of the Santiago Imán Revolt (1838-1840):
A Reassessment,”
Shara Ali; 8. “A Reluctant Advocate: Mariano Otero and the Revolución de
Jalisco,”
Melissa Boyd; 9. “Constitution and Congress: A Pronunciamiento for
Legality, December 1844,”
Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño; 10. “‘The Curious Manner in which Pronunciamientos are Got Up in this Country’”: The Plan of Blancarte of 26 July 1852,”
Rosie Doyle; 11. “Inventing the Nation: The Pronunciamiento and the Construction of Mexican National Identity, 1821-1876,”
Germán Martínez Martínez; 12. “‘I Pronounce Thus I Exist’: Redefining the Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 1821-1876,”
Will Fowler; Bibliography

Will Fowler, “Rafael del Riego and the Spanish Origins of the Nineteenth-Century
Mexican Pronunciamiento,” in Matthew Brown and Gabriel Paquette (eds.), Connections after Colonialism: Europe and Latin America in the 1820s (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, in press).

Its contents include: Preface; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Chronology
of Main Events and Pronunciamientos, 1821-1910, “Introduction: The Damned and the
Venerated: The Memory, Commemoration and Representation of the Nineteenth-Century
Mexican Pronunciamiento,” Will Fowler; 1. The “Memory and Representation of Rafael del Riego’s
Pronunciamiento in Constitutional New Spain and Within the Iturbide Movement 1820-1821,” Rodrigo
Moreno Gutiérrez; 2. “The Damned Man With the Venerated Plan: The Complex Legacies of Agustín
de Iturbide and the Iguala Plan,” Richard Warren; 3. “Refrescos, Iluminaciones and Te Deums:
Celebrating Pronunciamientos in Jalisco in 1823 and 1832,” Rosie Doyle; 4. “The Political Life of
Executed Pronunciados. The Representation and Memory of José Márquez and Joaquín Gárate’s 1830
Pronunciamiento of San Luis,” Kerry McDonald; 5. “Memory and Manipulation: The Lost Cause the
Santiago Imán Pronunciamiento,” Shara Ali; 6. “Salvas, Cañonazos y Repiques: Celebrating the
Pronuciamiento during the United States-Mexican War,” Pedro Santoni; 7. “Contemporary Verdicts on
the Pronunciamiento During the Early National Period,” Melissa Boyd; 8. “The Crumbling of a ‘Hero.’
Ignacio Comonfort from Ayutla to Tacubaya,” Antonia Pi-Suñer Llorens; 9. “Porfirio Díaz and the
Representation of the 2nd of April,” Verónica Zárate Toscano; 10. “Juan Bustamante’s Pronunciamiento
and the Civic Speeches that Condemned It. San Luis Potosí (1868-1869),” Flor de María Salazar Mendoza;
11. “‘As Empty a Piece of Gasconading Stuff As I have Ever Read:’ The
Pronunciamiento Through Foreign Eyes,” Will Fowler; Bibliography.

Will Fowler, The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico, 1821-1858 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, in preparation).